Don’t speak ill of your predecessors or successors. You didn’t walk in their shoes.
The most underestimated risk for a politician is overexposure.
Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.
You can have a broad popular democracy movement and have it end being taken over by the most vicious people and the result is you don’t end up with free political systems or free economic systems, you end up with a handful of radicals controlling the country.
Think ahead. Don’t let day-to-day operations drive out planning.
There’s another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn’t exist.
At 78 years old, I am not surprised at much anymore. Germany has taken divergent positions before, so has France, so has England, so has the US.
Don’t be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the President or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse. Resist it.
It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.
If you try to please everybody, somebody’s not going to like it.
The dead-enders are still with us, those remnants of the defeated regimes who’ll go on fighting long after their cause is lost.
You will launch many projects, but have time to finish only a few. So think, plan, develop, launch and tap good people to be responsible. Give them authority and hold them accountable. Trying to do too much yourself creates a bottleneck.
The Federal Government should be the last resort, not the first. Ask if a potential program is truly a federal responsibility or whether it can better be handled privately, by voluntary organizations, or by local or state governments.
The way to do well is to do well.
Test ideas in the marketplace. You learn from hearing a range of perspectives. Consultation helps engender the support decisions need to be successfully implemented.
In our system leadership is by consent, not command. To lead a President must persuade. Personal contacts and experiences help shape his thinking. They can be critical to his persuasiveness and thus to his leadership.
The press always wants to know how many people will be killed or how much it will cost, but the answers to those questions are not knowable.
You’re thinking of Eurpoe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe.
I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.
When you raise issues with the President, try to come away with both that decision and also a precedent. Pose issues so as to evoke broader policy guidance. This can help to answer a range of similar issues likely to arise later.